Final Book Report

Hello, readers!! Today, I would like to do the final report on the book that I had been reading.
In class, I kept reading a book about tea plantation in India, and I reported in class and this blog.

The book I read was "A Time for Tea" by Piya Chatterjee.

I chose this book simply because I like to drink tea.

It was very interesting to read since I didn't know much about the working condition in tea plantation. The author is an Indian lady who studied in England, United States, etc.
Therefore, the book had both dimension from outside of India and inside India. She said that pictures on the packages of tea in the States or England is not drawing the actual situation in tea plantation. As a Japanese, I didn't take it strange because I didn't know the working environment there and it was great to know that they are still not good.

It was a hard book for me to read since the book contained technical terms and foreign language that I couldn't understand. More over, the explanation of vocabulary was in the  latter part of the book, so each time when she explains uncommon word I had to turn pages. Thus, I think this book suits for an adult who is researching about tea plantation.

Some of my classmates said that they want to read it because they also like drinking tea or they think that they can understand more about tea plantation, while some said they don't want to because the book seems to be long.

This will be the end of my book report.

Thank you for reading:)

Restaurant Review

During my winter vacation, I went to a ramen restaurant  as my restaurant review assignment.
I went to a Ajigen Kuma Matsuri Okumura(味源熊祭おくむら) in Shibuya. It's a restaurant which serves Hokkaido ramen, and I had Sapporo Miso ramen.

The price was not very high, but not very low. Most of the menus was under 1000yen I guess. I went there with my friend at about 13:00, and it was almost full. Although the store is very small, it was bright and clean enough as a ramen restaurant.

Firstly, before entering the restaurant, we should buy ticket. After entering, give the ticket to the staff. As we sit down the water comes. I think our ramen arrived in less than five minutes after we sat down. The thickness and hardness of the ramen was the one that I like, thick and not soft. The soup was also delicious.


Although it's not a place that you can stay for a long time, I recommend you to eat here when you are in hurry, since they serve very quickly.

Introducing My favorite Japanese recipe

In the food culture class that I take, two student introduce their favorite recipes each week. Today, I would like to tell you the recipe that I presented to my classmates.

The recipe that I’m going to introduce is Keihan(鶏飯), a traditional dish from Amami Oshima, which locates in the southern part of Japan. I learned this from my teacher, in the international food culture class, when I was a high school student.

Here are the ingredients that we are going to use.

Chicken breast meat…1                

Seasoning A

  Water…1200ml

  Ginger…one clove

  Sake…2tbsp

Egg…2

Dried Shitake Mushrooms…4

Seasoning B

  Sugar…1tbsp

  Mirin…1tbsp

  Soy source …1tbsp

  Sake…1tbsp

Seasoning C

  Chicken soup stock…1tbsp

  Sake…1tbsp

  Soy source…1tpsp

  Salt…1tbsp

Toppings (As you like)

  Green Onion

  Ginger

  Yellow pickled radish (Takuan)

  Shredded seaweed

Step 1

Put chicken and seasonings A in to the pot and heat it for about 30 min over low to medium flame. After turning off the heat, cool it in the pot.

Step2

Make kinshi-tamago(錦糸卵）

There are some ways to make kinshi-tamago, so please make it as you like but make sure to mix it very well and cool it down before you cut.

Step3

Follow the instructions on the package of dried shiitake and reconstitute it and cut it into thin pieces.Then, simmer it with seasonings B and broth from the shiitake.

Step4

Put ingredients C to the soup that we got from step 1 and heat it. Add some salt if you like.

Step5

Tear the chicken into small pieces

Cut takuan and green onion into small pieces

Grate ginger. Put these things, shiitake, and kinshi-tamago on plates

Step6

Put rice in the rice bowl, the toppings as you like on that, pour hot soup and it’s done!

Paella

Today's topic is Paella, which is originally a Spanish Dish.
In our class, in pares, we were assined to a dish or an ingredient, and we will be doing a presentation on that.
My teacher gave me three questions to answer, so I would like to answer therm.

Q1 What is your personal relationship with the dish?

A. My mother used to make paella when I was little, because my father used to live in Spain and he bought pre-packaged ingredients of it as a souvenir.  

Q2 When was it introduced to Japan? Where was it served?

A. It is not clear when it was introduced to Japan. However, in Usuki City,  Oita prefecture, there is a traditional dish called Ouhan(黄飯), which was served from approximately mid-18th century. This dish is thought to have some relation with paella, because  this city used to be a headquarter of a Christian Daimyo, and had relationship with Spain.
It is served everywhere, like at house or at restaurants.

Q3 How did it change through its history in Japan?
A. In my opinion, paella served in restaurants is just like it is in Spain. However, in Japan, there are frozen paella and many types of pre-packaged ingredients, so it is becoming much easier for people to make.

Book Related to Food and a video related to it

 

So, as I mentioned in the last post I'm currently reading a book related to food, which is "A Time for Tea" by Piya Chatterjee. The books main topic is mainly about tea plantation in India, but it also explaies how it was introduced from India to China and then to Japan. As I'm Japanese, this point was quite interesting to me.

This week I also chose a video from YouTube which is about struggles of people engaged in tea plantation in India. Although their working environment had improved than it was before, their living environment is still very bad. They have electricity problems , sanitation problems, etc... To get more information about issues that they have, take a look at this video.




Thank you for reading:)

Introducing myself and the Food Related book I'm reading

Hi! And thank you very much for visiting my blog. I'm a university student in Tokyo learning English. I'm taking a class about food right now and in this blog. I would like to introduce the book that I'm reading right now and maybe some restaurants that I've been to and restaurants that I want to go.

In my first blog entry, I would like to introduce a food related book I'm currently reading .
The book title is  "A Time for Tea" and the author is Piya Chatterjee.
It is basically about the tea plantation in India. The content is about women labour, like how they are treated and how they were seen in advertisements.

I think this book is very interesting, because it is about something that we need to know, and something that could be written since the author could understand both English and Hindi. I have only read the first chapter, but I'm very excited to read the rest of it.

Thank you for reading:)